Military ties, tech on top of PM Narendra Modi’s Israel list
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a two-day maiden visit to Israel on July 5, the first by an Indian PM, and mark 25 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries, officials said on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a two-day maiden visit to Israel on July 5, the first by an Indian PM, and mark 25 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries, officials said on Wednesday.
Modi will be in Israel on July 5 and 6 en route to the July 7-8 G-20 Summit at Hamburg, Germany. (PTI Photo)
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
Modi will be in Israel on July 5 and 6 en route to the July 7-8 G-20 Summit at Hamburg, Germany.
Preparatory work for the historic first has already begun, with defence secretary G Mohan Kumar bound for Tel Aviv on April 24-26 for a high-power joint working group meeting on military cooperation.
India is keen to jointly develop an armed drone with long endurance and high survivability in the war theatre, officials said.
Foreign secretary S Jaishankar will also visit Israel early next month, even as India plays host to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
{{^usCountry}}
Though Israel is among the top four military hardware suppliers to India, with more than $1 billion in annual sales to New Delhi, the Modi government is keen to ensure that this visit is not focused on defence ties alone, but encompasses long-term economic and technological cooperation, resulting in a free-trade agreement.
{{/usCountry}}
{{#usCountry}}
Though Israel is among the top four military hardware suppliers to India, with more than $1 billion in annual sales to New Delhi, the Modi government is keen to ensure that this visit is not focused on defence ties alone, but encompasses long-term economic and technological cooperation, resulting in a free-trade agreement.
{{/usCountry}}
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
Modi’s visit will be an open acknowledgement of India’s close ties with Israel, and also pave the way for transfer of high-end agricultural technologies that will benefit Indian farmers.
In the context of West Asia and the Af-Pak region, terrorism will top the agenda, and Israel is expected to brief the Indian prime minister of the role of Iran’s support to Shia extremist groups in destabilising Iraq and Syria. Tel Aviv will also share its assessment on the spread of the so-called Islamic State (IS).
Modi’s itinerary in Israel is still be worked out, but the larger part of the two-day programme will be aimed at people-to-people interaction, and the charting out of an agenda for future exchanges, the officials said.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.
Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.
